Expert: LizaL - 7/16/2006

Question
Hi Lisa,

I started a new job where I have to photograph objects and then
adjust, clean, remove backgrounds in photoshop. My problem is
I can't seem to get the right color on the monitor to match the
object I photographed.
I use a high quality camera (Canon Powershot Pro1) and a light
box. I white balance it, put it in super macro because the objects
are small (pins). But when I download them into my mac at work,
they don't look right at all. I have to adjust the color. I can't
seem to get it right. It is either too red, yellow, bright, washed
out, etc. What can I do to improve my judgement on making
these colors match. Also, I have to do a lot of shiny gold and
silver. And advice on this as far as cleaning it up and removing
the reflections? What tool is best to remove a background and
still keep the edges crisp and clean?
Sorry about all the questions.

Joanne

Answer
Hi Joanne,

No problem about all the questions -- it sounds like you've got a good job, and you've really got a good camera! But with that can be problems, and I know you want to establish the best workflow. So here are my thoughts:

1. I'm sure you know that the color on your monitor can never, ever be an absolute match to any 3-dimensional object, whether you're printing something from your computer, or working with digital images onscreen. There is no substitute for nature, after all. So you can and should always expect some degree of variance between an object in nature, and the digital image of it that your camera has produced.

But that said, technology is improving all the time to bring about a higher level of accuracy. I would suggest some troubleshooting, and perhaps some added software and hardware, to see what's causing your problem.

The first thing I'd suggest is for you to calibrate your monitor. You can do this using a pretty unsophisticated (but fairly reliable) little program that's built into the Mac OS. On a Mac running OS X (and I'm running 10.4.6), you can open your Display preferences pane, click on the Color tab, find and click on your monitor in the lefthand column, and then click on Calibrate. That will open a simple program that runs your monitor through a series of basic adjustments. It looks like this:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/calibrate.jpg


If this monitor calibration program doesn't help, you could take it a step further and use not only software, but a hardware device that will do a much better job. There are a lot out there, but I've had experience with the Spyder series. I've worked for professional photographers who rely on and use these products religiously. The prices aren't too bad, either. Here's a link to the ColorVision site, the manufacturers:

http://www.colorvision.com/profis/profis_search.jsp?op=search&department_id=401


For what it's worth, Canon makes a program called Digital Photo Professional -- I don't know if it'd be worth trying, but since you have a Canon camera, maybe this would help with the importing of your images:

http://www.canon-europe.com/Support/software/dpp/


I've heard a lot about this next product, but check out the price!!! Talk about limiting! But of course, if you can get your boss to buy it, that's another story!!  :-)

http://www.publishingperfection.com/gretagmacbeth/ggm115/

But this is supposedly one of the very best products for color matching.

So you can see where I'm going with the color-matching issue: You'll never, ever get true, perfect results that occur in nature on a piece of hardware. But calibrate your monitor as best you can, and then see what happens when you edit your images.

One last thought on images being "washed out" -- in what format are you saving your images? CMYK will look washed out every time, so if you're saving these images for print and need to make them CMYK, be prepared for this, and compensate by using Levels to sharpen the images.

If you need some help using Levels, please post back.



2. On cleaning up shine... I do a lot of portrait retouching, and one thing I use  as a very quick fix for a simple shine on peoples' faces is the Dodge tool. I set it to a rather large brush size, then use it sort of like a powder puff -- just touching the shiny area once, or twice at most. You have to be careful not to lighten the shine -- you just want to minimize it by adding a little light around the shiny area.

But what's more accurate is the Patch tool. You can set it to Source in the Options bar, and then grab the shiny part, and drag it to a part of the picture that has better color information.

Here's a little movie that shows how this is done -- what I'm doing here isn't removing shine, but you can see how I use the Patch tool to rid the picture of some of its obvious imperfections:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/patch_tool.mov


3. There are a LOT of ways to remove backgrounds, and it all depends on the level of detail you need to remove as to which technique you should use.

In general, tools like the Magic Wand don't do the trick too well; they leave behind a big mess most of the time.

The Extract filter is pretty good, but it can also leave behind some mess. But in case you want to try it, here's a little movie:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/extract2.mov

Basically, after you've gone to the Filter pulldown menu and selected Extract, you use the magic marker tool to outline the area you want to extract. Fill this closed area with the paint bucket tool, and hit OK. You'll still have to do some cleanup, but this takes a lot of work out of the job.

For something more precise, there's a neat technique that involves using the Background Eraser. In a nutshell, you create a layer below your image, and fill it with black. Use the Background Eraser, set to Discontiguous, and make the brush tip a light, fluffy brush. Erase around your subject on your subject's layer. Then when you're finished, delete the black layer. This technique is particularly good for small, fine details, and especially peoples' hair.

Like this:

http://little-works.com/all_experts/bkgrnd_eraser.mov

(That's a 7MB file so it may take a LONG time to load, LOL! If you have problems post back and I'll go into greater detail with text, instead.)

Anyway, hope this helps, and please post back if you need for me to clarify anything.

Lisa